Gift
It’s probable that the vanishing of Hell
at our backs is inherent
in the coming of Paradise
Victor Hugo
Les Miserables
It’s easy to need to see
when the cream is lifted free
and cherished in its own
crockery that the thining
of the milk means what we
create of what globes still
float,
small blobs of fat’s
concentrated essence:
what we see
in the design is how your
last hours must’ve seemed:
the daily mail but
the unexpected letter
the daily walk but
the unexpected doe and lamb
the daily tea but
the unexpected cup
you brought for me
and how this turns our
head to the selfless
generosity. Because
honestly we’d grown
callused, expecting the every
day dirty stove left for me
to clean after a long day
at work or
two or three messes
the dog made when he was
kept too long and you
were not at home or
the barn door left open
and the bucket in the stall
dented from the thirsty
frustrated mare, how she’d
bare her teeth to me
angry but really hungry
thirsty, clicking out
of her need. Or,
lately:
you’ve been talking
about your other wives
as though they were both
in the room
and you were living
in California and days
I’d come home
and the door was open
and you were nearly naked
going for a swim. But it’s
December and the coldest
winter in fifty years.
Your skin was a blue I’d never
known and the pilot
on the gas stove had blown
taking the lips of the wind
seriously coming in the door
you’d left open. It was five
below zero outside.
(I’d driven home wanting
to tell you about the mother who
died of a heroin overdose
and her child, three, waited
with me, on my knee,
while I pushed buttons and opened
and closed security doors
from my seat and screen
and I’d driven home
with the heat of her
pee gone cold on my clothes
when they took her
and her mother away) I’d wanted
to say let me get clean
before you light into me
but you were that fabulous
shade of blue
and so I pulled you to our bed
and lay down on you to warm you.
Tomorrow
is Christmas Eve. The phone will ring
and you’ll answer it right
as rain you liked to say. You penetrated
everything you ever touched
or looked at
or sang about. You were
often awful. But on the morning
you were dying you made me
a cup of tea. I thought you’d forgotten
how. It’s all I could get out
to get you you said
and touched your chest
and fell.
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